


Elegeia

by icarus_chained



Category: Babylon 5
Genre: Afterlife, Canonical Character Death, Companionship, Forgiveness, Friendship, Love, M/M, Moving On, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-16
Updated: 2020-09-16
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:15:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26497744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarus_chained/pseuds/icarus_chained
Summary: Death is like waking up, not like going to sleep. They are done, finally, they are free. But perhaps there is room to keep each other company a little while yet.
Relationships: G'Kar & Londo Mollari, G'Kar/Londo Mollari
Comments: 8
Kudos: 42





	Elegeia

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, I realise I have written pretty much [exactly the same fic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5151032) before. But every time I rewatch even a little of B5, I have to have another good cry about these two all over again.

It felt like waking up. Dying. Not going to sleep, not like the humans thought, but like waking instead. Like dawn. Breaking the dark surface, into the sunrise. That breathless moment of stillness and peace, where just for an instant all was possible. 

G’Kar knew where he was. Of course he did. He knew what had happened.

He opened both eyes, and nothing hurt.

He didn’t move for a long minute. If such things as ‘minutes’ had meaning anymore. He didn’t move. Only lay there. Blinking both eyes, whole in his skull. Feeling the lack of aches and pains, the absent burning of vanished scars. A lightness across his whole body. He was almost entranced by the sensation. He might admit that. Damn near luxuriating. 

It had been a while. An absence of pain. It had been a long, _long_ number of years.

Well then, he thought mildly. A sliver of dark humour. Perhaps death was good for something after all. He would have to tell Mollari.

… Mollari. Yes. He would have to tell Mollari.

He sat up. Slowly. Oh, so slowly. Half habit, preparation for old aches and pains. Half … something else. Not hesitance. Not quite. But something.

He sat on tile. A throne room. An empty room, in an empty palace. There was no noise, not anywhere around him. Complete and utter silence.

Because Mollari, when he wept, had learned to do so soundlessly.

He was crumpled on the steps to the throne. A small, white figure, thrown carelessly across the carpet. His hands were clutched to his shoulder. His _empty_ shoulder. His head was bowed, and his shoulders shuddered as he wept.

G’Kar sat there, for the longest time, and simply stared at him.

It was Londo who raised his head eventually. Who lifted a white face, marred by silent, silver tears, and looked at him. G’Kar had … no words, for the expression on the Centauri’s face.

He didn’t want any, either.

“… Ah, G’Kar,” Londo whispered. With that pinched, wry smile of his. That twist of his lip. “My old friend. Here we are, then. Here we are. I am … so sorry, my friend. So very, very sorry.”

G’Kar wasn’t entirely sure what he was apologising for. Which of a thousand things. But it didn’t really matter. He didn’t want any of them.

He pushed himself to his feet. Swayed, for a moment. Delighted. Not a single thing hurt. He shook himself, and wandered closer. 

Londo watched him come. Watched him loom, a Narn in all his strength, over the crumpled form of a Centauri emperor. There could have been anything in his expression for that. Fear, affront. Shame. Challenge. Hatred. There wasn’t. Only that trembling smile, and those tracks of silver tears.

G’Kar stared down at him. There was … a lot he could say. A lot he could do. This moment had been a lifetime coming, for both of them. There were a lot of things he could do to mark it.

Instead, he crouched down. Swiftly and silently. He dropped to his haunches, the better to look his old friend and best enemy in the eye. Eyes. Two of them each. He smiled faintly. Felt a strange little sneer cross his own face.

“I was trying to enjoy having finally gotten the chance to kill you,” he said, with gentle teasing, and nothing else. “Must you ruin everything, Mollari?”

Londo laughed. A thick, startled breath. It staggered him. Visibly. He hunched around it. Stared at G’Kar in breathless awe. And, still, a kind of grief.

“Yes,” he said quietly. “I do that, don’t I? But I _am_ sorry, you know. Truly, G’Kar. All our lives I have asked things of you. Demanded them. Now I have done so again. I would say I did not mean to, but … For some reason, you have always been the only one I could trust. I should not have asked you this. But I – Well. But it is too late. I already have.”

Strange. A lifetime of waiting for the man to apologise, and suddenly G’Kar didn’t want it. Not for _this_ , anyway. Not for this.

And not for the reasons one might have thought, once upon a time.

“Oh, believe me,” he said, with enough of the old teasing in it to stand as his forgiveness. “This one, I rather enjoyed. No charge, Mollari. My pleasure.”

Londo tried to smile. To his credit, he did try. It slipped off his face, though. Slid away. His gaze turned down, turned away. His hand clutched around his shoulder.

“I hope so,” he said. A tone that sent a chill slicing through G’Kar, more memory than anything else. “You should have some satisfaction, at least, with all that I have asked of you. It is … It is a strange thing. A … A perfect irony, don’t you think?” A faint smile, there and gone again as he glanced up. “That a Narn should … give more for Centauri than any of her people. Even unto death. Is that not a … Is that not something, G’Kar?”

The chill deepened. Sank into the pit of G’Kar’s stomach like a stone. No. No, he didn’t like that. There were a thousand things in that little speech that he refuted. To his very soul. A thousand.

But here was the first. He reached over, and pulled Londo’s hand away from the empty space at his shoulder.

“… Hardly more than _any_ of her people,” he said quietly. In a voice full of bile and venom. He had learned pity for the Centauri over the years. He had learned none for the Drakh. Londo’s hand spasmed in his. Shook, and tried to flinch back. G’Kar caught it tight. Enough to bruise. And thought of a conversation more than a decade past. “’You may hear rumours of my behaviour’. ‘The position changes people’. You know, I am ashamed of that. Of not _noticing_. You’d think of anyone here, anyone on this world, I would know what it is to hear a man trying not to scream.”

Londo caught another breath. Swallowed another cry. A decade’s training in how to weep silently, to suffer without screaming. Oh yes, G’Kar was ashamed. A Narn, born to slavery, before ever they’d come to Cartagia’s endurance test. How had he not _seen_?

But Londo smiled, finally. A grim one, a dark one, but entirely honest. The sort of smile that would do any warrior, Narn or Centauri, proud.

The sort of smile G’Kar knew very, very well.

“It was necessary,” Londo said, with all the dignity of an emperor as he lay shaking on the carpet. “I didn’t want you to know. Or … I wanted you to know enough, maybe, to forgive me down the line. If such a thing were possible. But not enough to … to keep me from keeping my people safe.” He smiled, and brushed his thumb across the bruising grip G’Kar still held on his hand. “Selfish to the last, you see. As selfish as always, G’Kar.”

G’Kar closed his eyes. He had to. He tugged the captured hand in against his chest. Beat it there, softly, against his heart. His other hand, he reached out, to grip Mollari’s neck. 

From behind, now. The scruff. Not to strangle. Not again.

“There are times,” he said, opening his eyes to glare into the Centauri’s face. “There are times when I miss how easy it once was to despise you. It was a worthwhile sacrifice, never doubt. But life was much easier when I could still allow myself to hate.”

Londo smiled at him. Tremulous and tired. 

“Likewise,” he murmured, all wry and ancient villainy. “Life was much simpler then. When we were young men, and death was easy. Hmm?” His smile went lopsided, and he reached up to brush G’Kar’s cheek. Softly, with his free hand. Almost wonderingly. “We know better now. There are a thousand types of death, and very few of them easy. And now I have brought you to another one. Twice now. Once for Narn, and once for Centauri. You must be very tired of me, my friend, when I have asked it of you so many times.”

G’Kar sighed faintly. Exhaustion, a little. Exasperation. But something beyond that. Something else.

He had two eyes. His back did not ache. His knees did not burn from an extended crouch. He had no scars, and no hurts, not now. And he had no wish to go back to them either.

“I’m tired of something,” he agreed. “But not that. I didn’t die for Centauri, Londo. I may have developed pity for your people over the years, but not love. Not enough, not for that. Once for Narn, yes, first and always. But this? This was for you.”

And Delenn, true, and Sheridan. Lyta. Everyone else, everyone who’d died to the Shadows and their inheritors, died to slavery, died to war. All of that. This thing Londo had asked of him, this death to stave off so many others. It was nothing. The habit of a lifetime, come full circle. Nothing more. He could die for that a thousand times. Maybe he had.

But this one, this time, this _last_ time … it had been for Londo. For a friend who could not scream, who had asked him to help free his people.

As Londo had once freed his. After damning them first. But still.

Londo stared at him. Half-blind, through tears. Half an emperor, half a slave. Half an enemy, half a friend. His hand warm and tight in G’Kar’s.

“What are you?” he whispered blankly. “What are you, G’Kar? What god could give such a gift as you?”

G’Kar snorted. “Gods cannot,” he answered. “Or prophecies either. Choice. After a lifetime of hatred and enmity, Mollari. Choice brings you a friend, to free you from pain.”

Londo closed his eyes. Weeping again, just as silently. Smiling, just as bright. “Then,” he said. “Then I must be glad, for whatever choice it was that I finally made correctly.”

G’Kar laughed softly. “I didn’t say it was _your_ choice,” he said. Though it was. At least in part. It was. “Though yes. You’ve made few enough of them. You should be glad for those few you made right. As … As I am. As I have learned to be.”

A thousand choices. A thousand rights and a thousand wrongs. Maybe somewhere else Mr Morden had chosen differently, chosen another request to answer. Maybe somewhere else, Londo had never chosen regret, never kept his word. Maybe somewhere else, G’Kar had killed him before he ever had the chance. Somewhere else. In another world.

But not this one. And either way, not anymore.

“Come along, Mollari,” he said. Gently, as close as he could come. He heaved himself to his feet, so much lighter and easier on them than he had been in years, and tugged lightly on his captured hand. Trying to pull the other man up after him, as always. “I have had enough of Centauri Prime. For this and for several lifetimes. And I think … I think perhaps you have as well.”

Londo blinked up at him. An emperor. A small, battered figure, thrown carelessly before a throne. An old enemy, an old friend. He blinked, and tipped his head back. Stared thoughtlessly into space for a small moment.

“Enough,” he murmured. “Perhaps. Perhaps I have had enough. I do not … I do not regret what I have done. Not this. I cannot. But … Perhaps I should like to see daylight again. To be allowed to walk. To run. Perhaps even … Perhaps I might like to learn to dance again, hmm? What do you think, old friend? What would a man have to do, to earn that?”

And it was nonsense, of course. _Centauri_ nonsense, the sort that wasn’t really nonsense at all. Somewhere under there, where they never allowed anyone to see. G’Kar shook his head. But there was only one answer.

“You can start by standing up,” he said. Tugging again. “Stand up, and maybe listen to someone wiser than yourself for a change. And we’ll work out the rest from there.”

Londo blinked at him another bit. G’Kar was almost disappointed. He’d expected at least some mockery for the ‘wiser’ part. A crack about seeking disciples even here. But Londo seemed to have other concerns, still. More of that awe, though a little less of the grief.

“ _We_ will work it out, will we?” the man murmured softly. Strange, and half afraid. He tugged G’Kar’s hand, for a change. Worried his fingers around it. “Together, G’Kar? Even now? You to go, and I to follow?” He smiled crookedly. “Are you not tired of me yet at all?”

G’Kar considered that. Looking out over an empty room. An empty room, in an empty palace, in an empty world. As the sun rose. The bright dawn of death, when all was left behind, and everything, for just a moment, seemed possible.

“… Maybe I’m not,” he said. Idly. Grinning a young Narn’s grin, and winning an old Centauri’s half-laugh of alarm in the process. He pulled, one much sharper, much stronger tug, and yanked the other man to his feet in one powerful motion. Oh, but it was good to have such strength again. Londo came with a stagger, stumbling against him. A breath huffed out of him, somewhere between a cry and a laugh, and G’Kar caught him around the shoulders. Pulled him close. Sneered down at him, with all the old pride and challenge. “What say you, Mollari? Do you dare travel with a Narn a little farther?”

Londo stared at him thoughtfully for a second. Another expression G’Kar had no word for. And then he huffed, that strange smile on his face, and raised their still-joined hands to his lips. Brushed a warm breath across G’Kar’s knuckles, the stain of old tears. Kissed them, more firmly, and drew G’Kar’s hand to _his_ chest.

“And what answer can I give to that, old friend?” he asked quietly. “Lead on. Where you go, I go. It would seem that still holds true.” A laugh, half wondering. Quietly amazed. “Where you go, I go. _Thank you_.”

G’Kar stared at him. Something half like rage and half like wonder in his chest. Half strangled. He choked out a laugh, and tugged the man’s head in against his chest. Pressed their foreheads together, out of blind despair, and then pressed a kiss there instead.

“You will be the death of me, Mollari,” he whispered. Almost amused. “ _Again_. Somehow, though we are already dead, you will be the death of me again. And for some reason, I can find no anger for it. I can’t imagine why.”

Londo shuddered into him. Pressed his face against G’Kar’s chest. Grief, maybe. Pain. But then he stiffened. Straightened his spine. And looked up at G’Kar with a very old smile. One from twenty years before.

“Well,” he said, with tired old daring. “I have always said you were insane.”

And there, somewhere very far from Centauri Prime, death’s new day finished dawning, to a Centauri challenge, and a bark of Narn laughter.


End file.
